How to Learn Monkey-Style Kung Fu

by
LUKE SCHMALTZ Sept. 11, 2017

Luke Schmaltz

Luke Schmaltz has extensive experience in martial arts and personal training, which informs his writing on health and fitness. He also spends time in the entertainment world as a songwriter and performer. He has written and produced numerous studio albums and published many articles online.

Crouching low, you confuse an attacker by disguising your reach. Your head juts back and forth while you hold your wrists in contorted positions around your face. In a blinding flash, you transform from a retreating target into a vicious counter-assailant, striking low and high with deadly, relentless precision. This is how opponents are neutralized by monkey-style Kung Fu artists. Monkey style is an advanced method that should be learned from an accredited master by an experienced student.

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Death From Below

It is essential to adopt extremely low stances. This is done through conditioning the muscles, joints and tendons in your legs to endure the strain of holding a crouch for an extended period of time. Do this by exaggerating your horse, bow, empty and scissor stances as you practice your forms and striking drills. Bent legs and a low center of gravity mimic that of the natural stance of the monkey. A low stance serves the deceptive nature of the style by diminishing you as a target and as a threat. Bent legs act like compressed springs. When the time is perfect to counter-strike, they propel you into your attacker.

Commitment to Character

Monkey-style Kung Fu requires that you immerse yourself completely in the personality of the animal. One essential trait that needs to be emulated is unpredictability. When you are in your low stance, practice moving your head around while displaying an array of different primate expressions. You have to learn to believably exude bewilderment, fear, happiness, wonder, confusion and shock in no particular order and with no definitive reason. This is another part of the monkey's deceptive strategy that distracts an attacker through confusion.

Passive Aggressive Strategy

A monkey retreats when attacked and lashes back only when there is nowhere left to run. You must adopt this technique in a passive aggressive strategy to weaken an opponent. A low stance is seen as a vulnerability. You have to learn to let your opponent think you are cowering and then lure him into striking by deliberately leaving yourself open. Practice dropping your guard while sparring in a low stance and watch how your training partner reacts. Once he commits to a strike, you snap into action in a split second using the unpredictability character trait.

Agile Attacks

You have to practice going from your defensive stance into full attack mode quickly and with deadly force. Your strategy should employ palm slaps, finger gouges, claw hands and hammerfists. You should practice mimicking these on a willing sparring partner. It would be best to find a fellow monkey style student with good sparring pads. You must also practice targeting precise strike points in the lower, middle and upper zones of the body in disorderly progressions. Develop your own combinations where you strike high, low then middle or low, high then middle.

All Fours

Monkeys have an opposing digit on their feet where humans have a big toe. This allows them to maneuver through their environment as though they have four hands. You must learn to use your feet and legs not only to keep you low in your stance, but to kick, trip and otherwise manipulate an attacker into submission and defeat. You should also practice running about in a forward crouch with your hands and feet contacting the ground, propelling you forward.